Block Will Resign as Agriculture Secretary : Says Recently Enacted 5-Year Farm Program Was Last Major Goal He Hoped to Accomplish

Agriculture Secretary John R. Block, the lightning rod for criticism of Reagan Administration farm policies during the worst economic crisis to hit rural America since the Great Depression, announced Tuesday that he will resign in mid-February.

Citing the recently enacted five-year farm program as the last major goal he had hoped to accomplish, the Illinois hog farmer said he wants to pursue “new, exciting possibilities,” which he declined to discuss.

“Agriculture has been good to me,” he said. “I think I’ve given something back. I’ve surely tried.”

Speculation on a successor immediately centered on Deputy Secretary John R. Norton, a wealthy Arizona farmer close to President Reagan’s inner circle, and Richard E. Lyng, a former deputy secretary who served as state agriculture director when Reagan was governor of California.

Reportedly First Choice

Lyng, reportedly Reagan’s original choice for secretary of agriculture in 1981, is now a private agricultural consultant here.

Only Monday, Block denied in a CBS News interview, aired Tuesday morning, that he planned to resign--indeed, he indicated that he planned to stay on for several years. But in his announcement Tuesday afternoon, he confessed that he had made his decision three or four months ago, although his staff had advised him to deny everything in the CBS interview.

“Please forgive me,” Block told reporters.

Block, 50, “thinks the farm bill achieved some of the reforms he sought, and he feels he is leaving on the crest of a wave instead of the trough,” said John Gordley, the agricultural aide to Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.). “He’s tired. But he looked five years younger making the announcement.”

Block is widely regarded as a personable, solid team player who strongly supported White House efforts to phase out 50 years of government crop subsidies and farm production controls.

Reagan accepted the resignation Tuesday “with deep regret and heartfelt appreciation” and told Block in a letter: “Yours has been a challenging assignment, and you have handled it with great distinction.”

But the agriculture secretary has been criticized for political naivete in dealing with Congress and for failing to state his views forcefully on behalf of farmers in Administration policy debates.

Block bore the brunt of criticism that the Administration was trying to encourage all-out production by farmers in a free market at a time when more production controls and continued income subsidies were considered the proper policy.

“He was a little too devoted to getting government out of agriculture without quite understanding the problems that would be associated with that kind of immediate action,” said Eugene Moos, a House Agriculture Committee aide to Rep. Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.).

High Interest Rates

However, Sen. Mark Andrews (R-N.D.) suggested that Block was criticized unfairly for presiding over a farm crisis that was largely the result of economic forces beyond his control, primarily high interest rates and a strong dollar in foreign trade.

“The fact he was willing to triple spending through the Farmers Home Administration for operating loans--the fact he was willing to work as hard as he did” to maintain relatively high price support levels--”indicates that he did the best he could under difficult circumstances,” Andrews said.

At his news conference, Block predicted that agriculture is “starting to turn the corner,” but he acknowledged that there still are “stressful times ahead of us.”

Reagan, in his news conference Tuesday evening, said he agrees with Block that the country has turned the corner on the farm economy. He said the newly approved farm bill, substantially different from the program originally proposed by the White House, “is going to take a little patience . . . but (it) will help maintain an income for the farmer at the same time that we get agriculture back out to market control and not government regulation and control.”

Block will be leaving at the beginning of an election year during which Democrats hope the farm issue will help them wrest control of the Senate from Republicans.

Doubts Impact

Block said he does not think his resignation is “going to have any impact at all on the 1986 elections.” Gordley, whose boss, Dole, is up for reelection this year and also would like to retain his job as Senate majority leader, agreed.

“Whoever leaves after the farm bill is completed takes with him any liabilities,” Gordley said.

Democrats served notice that they will be watching to see if the new agriculture secretary has, in the words of Sen. John Melcher (D-Mont.), “the conviction to go to the White House and say: ‘Now, look here, this is the way it is in agriculture and this is what we ought to do--one, two, three--and do it.’ ”

Tripled Size of Farm

A West Point graduate, Block once was the epitome of a successful farmer as he helped to triple the size of his Illinois family spread to more than 3,000 acres and to produce about 6,000 hogs a year.

However, paralleling the hard times that hit most of the Farm Belt in recent years, Block’s investments have soured and his business practices with hometown partners have provoked sharp scrutiny and criticism on Capitol Hill. He reportedly is at least $5 million in debt.

“Anyone close to agriculture has been disappointed in the farm economy in the last three or four years,” Block said. “My situation is better than it was a year ago, because I’ve done what a lot of farmers have had to,” including selling off some of his assets.